If I was extremely rich (this is all completely hypothetical), how would I invest my money in helping straighten out a ghetto neighborhood and in the process help all the individuals in it? It’s probably not as simple as handing out money like candy, with drugees and all. Or is it even possible to help them with money?
You’d start out by asking a mod to move this thread to IMHO. But no need, I already did that. 
I’m still not very familiar with these boards yet, what is IMHO may I ask? 
If you were a billionaire, you could make a good start by buying up a large hunk of land in the middle of the neighborhood and putting in a well-stocked grocery store with below-break-even pricing. Hire local people to work as checkers, baggers and stockers, with above minimum wage pay and decent health care. Hire a buttload of heavily-armed security to make sure that people feel safe shopping there, and that no enterprising young socialist tries to redistribute the wealth in an informal manner. Stock lots of healthy foods and little or no prepackaged junk. Put a large kitchen on-site to make ready-to-eat meals that aren’t loaded with salt and sugar.
cookie-eater - It’s because there isn’t one factual answer to your question. Everybody is going to have a different approach to the problem, up to and including napalm.
Ooooh. I just found out. Is this really an opinion-type question? I have no idea. I’m completely cluelesss. I thought there was a solid factual answer.
The “In My Humble Opinion” forum - since this one is for strictly factual Q&A; and your question is probably going to get more opinion-based responses. 
A few things that might help:
- Improve infrastructure (e.g. public transportation, roads, facilities) to make the area more appealing to higher income people and businesses.
- Invest in education and social resources, such as parks. Fire the lazy teachers and get really motivated ones.
- Condemn eyesore buildings. Ugly, run down buildings have a psychological effect.
Oh, and silenus’s answer is pretty good. Jobs and security.
Free day care, or anything, really, that helps parents grow their children responsibly, and that helps those children grow up wanting to be responsible. (My more cynical self wants to suggest free spay-neuter for adults, but that is un-PC and wrong.)
(I live adjacent to serious ghetto - just north of Flint, Michigan, and do volunteer work with that population.)
I do think that, for long-term benefits, anything that helps parents and children is key to de-ghetto-izing.
Oooh. I see now.
Don’t forget access to health care, a library, and outdoor space.
Easy.
Get a meeting with Geoffrey Canada. Listen to whatever he says, do whatever he tells you to do and I guarantee that “ghetto” neighborhood will soon become a “revitalized” neighborhood with social scientists and foundations begging for your time…
With all due respect, I think the OP meant how do you improve the neighborhood for people who are already living there. You gave a great recipe for gentrifying a neighborhood which will work because it has been done lots of times but you won’t end up with the same people living there at the end of the process.
I really like the answer given by Silenus. It addresses a lot of problems in poor neighborhoods simultaneously while keeping the current population mostly intact.
Access to health care isn’t really a concern in ghetto neighborhoods - most people who live there are on Medicaid or Medicare or a county plan so they don’t have to pay, so there’s a plethora of community clincs and always at least one major public hospital.
Libraries are mostly irrelevant to your typical ghetto resident.
I don’t know about everywhere else, but Flint has many really wonderfully big parks, county parks and the Flint River Trail. Along with close to 50% of the city being empty or burned out, which creates lots of interstitial open space. The safe parks (there’s a couple of those) are almost always deserted. Including the ones with nice playgrounds, beaches, wooded trails and bathrooms. Utterly deserted. However, drive by any neighborhood party store or bodega - a humming hive of activity.
Most of the parks are populated with drug dealers and armed thugs and are used primarily by…drug dealers and armed thugs, along with victims, and are not at all safe at any time of day or night.
I’m guessing you have little direct experience with actual “ghetto” neighborhoods.
From your lips to my ears. I’m not God, but I play one on this board.
samclem, Moderator
Or better: Fire the parents and get really great foster ones.
Yeah, I saw a segment on CNN about his work and was very impressed. He seems to place a lot of emphasis on giving kids high expectations to aspire to. I definitely believe that most people will live UP OR DOWN to the expectations that you set for them.
build Robocop to clean up the streets
I live in a real-life ghetto. Our shiny new library is buzzing with all kinds of people- retirees raiding the video library, college kids who moved out here for the cheap rent, adults participating in literacy programs, high schools kids looking for a quiet place to hit the books, homeless people trying to stay warm, etc. The parks in the day have…kids and dogs. Drug dealers usually aren’t keen on working the Saturday morning shift.
More importantly, what these amenities do is attract economic diversity, which is essential to the health of any neighborhood. Ghetto can’t be ghetto without a certain critical mass. Drug dealers can’t prosper if there is nobody to sell to. Five gang members in a neighborhood are just a few young punks, easily contained. It’s not until you have twenty gang members that an actual criminal economy can develop. A crack house probably won’t develop on a block with one run down building, but it probably will on a block with five run down buildings. In order to stay healthy, communities need workers, spenders, business people, employees and the whole broad range of people. Ghettos are caused by having all the well-off people in one area, and all the poor people in another. Since the very poor don’t have enough disposable income to keep local businesses afloat, the businesses die off, leaving people with no jobs and no hope, leading to more poverty.
Likewise, one family from a family that doesn’t value education has a chance if she is in a school of children who have mostly been taught to value education. Peer pressure and social norms can help counteract some of the damage at home. But when you have 30 kids from families that don’t value education, there is a problem.
Of course to some degree, promoting economic diversity is just shuffling the problem around a bit, and might not actually help the poor people as much as make it all a bit less visible. To really address poverty in the US, you are looking at huge structural problems with an enormous amount of history behind them. Good luck with that one.
One hundred percent agreement on this. (Well, except I’d aim for break-even prices.) There’s lot of things which would help poor communities but I can’t think of anything that would have an immediate day-to-day impact like having a local place where you could buy food, household goods, and medication at reasonable prices.
You’d also have to add more police presence and community support programs for kids. A lot of this is poverty. You need health care, food, daycare, and affordable housing.
I have a student who is chronically homeless. She’s about to be homeless again because her mom’s boyfriend is getting out of jail in Feb and they only have a two bed place. Her brother has one room and she and her mom have the other. 